This invention relates to vehicle safety seats for reducing injury to an occupant during a vehicle crash.
Automobile and other vehicle crashes account for numerous deaths and injuries throughout the world. Many approaches to protecting occupants during a vehicle crash have been proposed and studied. Among such approaches are active lap and shoulder belts, passive shoulder belts and air bags which inflate upon impact. Air bags, passive shoulder harnesses and active shoulder and lap belts offer some protection but often in the event of a crash an occupant "submarines" beneath the belts or air bag, thereby sustaining an injury upon impact with the vehicle's instrument panel. In "submarining" injury may additionally be caused by the lap belt sliding upwards past the occupant's hip and compressing the softer abdominal region. Lap and shoulder belt loading can also be sufficiently high during a crash to cause significant internal injuries.
There is also considerable prior art directed to seats that move with respect to the vehicle under the influence of the inertial loads resulting from the rapid deceleration of the vehicle in a crash. These prior art devices typically tilt the seat cushion upwardly while simultaneously moving the seat forward in an effort to reduce an occupant's impact with the instrument panel structure. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,022,707 describes a tilting seat in which the front and rear portions of the seat move upwardly with the front moving upwardly a greater amount than the rear.